Tuesday’s ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington makes permanent, for the time being, the overturning of an injunction imposed last month by a lower court judge.

The scientific community was stunned when U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ordered a temporary halt to embryonic stem cell research while he considered a lawsuit filed by two scientists who study adult stem cells. The scientists say the Obama administration’s stem cell research policy violates an existing congressional ban on research that harms human embryos.

But a federal appeals court earlier this month temporarily lifted the injunction to give the administration time to make its case that even a temporary halt to the research could set back promising science.

The argument apparently succeeded. Now research funded with federal dollars can proceed pending a full appeal of the lower court judge’s ruling.

Jonah Goldberg has put into words what I have been thinking and feeling since the financial meltdown of 2008. We have turned a page and entered a new era in American history. He wonders if, as a result, the political rules have changed.

But what about when the rules change? For nearly a century now, the rules have said that tough economic times make big government more popular. For more than 40 years it has been a rule that environmental disasters — and scares over alleged ones — help environmentalists push tighter regulations. According to the rules, Americans never want to let go of an entitlement once they have it. According to the rules, populism is a force for getting the government to do more, not less. According to the rules, Americans don’t care about the deficit during a recession.

And yet none of these rules seem to be applying; at least not too strongly. Big government seems more unpopular today than ever. The Gulf oil spill should be a Gaiasend for environmentalists, and yet three quarters of the American people oppose Obama’s drilling ban. Sixty percent of likely voters want their newly minted right to health care repealed. Unlike Europe, where protestors take to the streets to save their cushy perks and protect a large welfare state, the Tea Party protestors have been taking to the streets to trim back government.

Go here to read the rest at Townhall. When Obama won election there was much talk among his giddy acolytes in the media that he was the second FDR and that Obama would usher in a Second New Deal. The cover of Time magazine that graces the top of this post is a prime example of the millennial fever that gripped the Left in this country at the beginning of the Obama administration. Now it has all turned to dust and ashes for a large section of the Left. In exchange for years of effort on their part they have an administration that has roused an angry electorate against it. This bemuses the Left since many of them view the Obama administration as a failure because it has been too moderate (Yeah, I do find that hilarious), as noted by Eric Alterman in The Nation: Read the rest of this entry »

Whistle-blower J. Christian Adams, a career voting rights attorney with the Department of Justice, resigned his position in disgust over the handling of the voter intimidation case brought against the members of the New Black Panther Party featured in the above video:

On the day President Obama was elected, armed men wearing the black berets and jackboots of the New Black Panther Party were stationed at the entrance to a polling place in Philadelphia. They brandished a weapon and intimidated voters and poll watchers. After the election, the Justice Department brought a voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party and those armed thugs. I and other Justice attorneys diligently pursued the case and obtained an entry of default after the defendants ignored the charges. Before a final judgment could be entered in May 2009, our superiors ordered us to dismiss the case.

The New Black Panther case was the simplest and most obvious violation of federal law I saw in my Justice Department career. Because of the corrupt nature of the dismissal, statements falsely characterizing the case and, most of all, indefensible orders for the career attorneys not to comply with lawful subpoenas investigating the dismissal, this month I resigned my position as a Department of Justice (DOJ) attorney.

The federal voter-intimidation statutes we used against the New Black Panthers were enacted because America never realized genuine racial equality in elections. Threats of violence characterized elections from the end of the Civil War until the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Before the Voting Rights Act, blacks seeking the right to vote, and those aiding them, were victims of violence and intimidation. But unlike the Southern legal system, Southern violence did not discriminate. Black voters were slain, as were the white champions of their cause. Some of the bodies were tossed into bogs and in one case in Philadelphia, Miss., they were buried together in an earthen dam.

Based on my firsthand experiences, I believe the dismissal of the Black Panther case was motivated by a lawless hostility toward equal enforcement of the law. Others still within the department share my assessment. The department abetted wrongdoers and abandoned law-abiding citizens victimized by the New Black Panthers. The dismissal raises serious questions about the department’s enforcement neutrality in upcoming midterm elections and the subsequent 2012 presidential election. Read the rest of this entry »

Hattip to Allahpundit at Hot Air. Well that didn’t take long. I have discussed here the disastrous interview that Charles Bolden had with Al Jazeera in which he stated that the foremost policy goal of NASA under the Obama administration was to reach out to Muslim nations and raise their self-esteem as to their contributions regarding science, math and engineering.

“When I became the NASA administrator — or before I became the NASA administrator — he charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science … and math and engineering.”

NASA administrator Charles Bolden in an interview with Al Jazeera, tells us all we really need to know about the Obama administration:

“When I became the NASA administrator — or before I became the NASA administrator — he charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science … and math and engineering.” Read the rest of this entry »